Hi DS, You have been lurking awhile. ;) Glad you're enjoying Carrara and Kix's tutorials 1) Unfortunately, 3D aura is a post render effect and does not show up in reflected objects. (Light cones and light spheres are actively rendered and do show up in reflections) 2) That 'stair stepping' is a function of the 3D aura itself - it does not antialias the edges and creates jaggies at screen resolutions. The only fix for that is to render the image at a greater resolution and scale it down. :0/ 3) I don't think lights would do the job for you when creating a laser blade effect. A better way, and this would show up in reflections too, is to create a pinwheel of long alpha plane texture maps with a glow. In actual film production, these effects, including reflections, are actually created in post-production with software like Shake or After Effects and not done with 3D apps. Ahhhhhh, I'm still hunting for the perfect software that does it all. :D Mark